


Towards A Fairy Tale Ending

by KingMidas



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingMidas/pseuds/KingMidas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders knows what happens in fairy tales. The witches and wizards rarely get happy ends. (Loosely implied F!Hawke/Anders. Mostly Anders considering unfortunate foreshadowing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Towards A Fairy Tale Ending

  
Magical beings in tales were often connected to animals, he thought. The explanation was usually that nature and magic were meant to intertwine, that animals were drawn to it, that humans with connections to them were made all the more powerful by them. Anders had heard those stories even in the Circle Tower, picked them up in the library when he had nothing better to do. The Dalish were especially fond of them, with their ‘mother of all halla’ and their ‘dread wolf’, even if those were a bit ham-fisted, in his opinion. (The Dalish did love their allegories.) Humans had endless myths of shapeshifters, of mages who lived outside the circle, hiding in plain sight as dogs or birds, or even monstrously large spiders. Some accounts of Flemeth even connected her to a dragon, he’d heard, and she wouldn’t even have been the first. Dragons and scary mages went hand in hand, apparently. The Archdemon came to mind.  


More subtle, perhaps, were the Western images of witches, the ones whose familiars were lithe, sneaky cats, as independent and mischievous as they were. Those too, he knew, were meant to be cautionary. They painted magic users as their pets, made them distrustful loners, black cats to bring about bad luck to anyone who crossed their path.  


What did it mean, then, that he still found himself putting milk saucers out by the door?  


It had been several weeks since Anders had seen a cat anywhere in the sewers. Sometimes, if he was lucky, he spotted one in the slums of Lowtown, all skinny and hunting for rats by the docks. He tried to feed them when he could, and he left whatever he could spare outside of the clinic. It was the least he could do for them.  
Cats had always been good company to Anders. In the Circle, there had been a few, strays that had wandered about the dungeons when he was in confinement, lazy mousers that the templars allowed to walk the corridors unchecked. They had been his friends when there were scant others willing to talk to him, forgiven him each time he was dragged back in by armed guards.  


In the wardens, he had had Ser Pounce. He’d eased the transition so easily; some nights, Anders had woken, still amazed to be out of the Circle, amazed not to be hunted. Pounce was there to nestle quietly into his coat.  


Obviously, there were mages who got on fine without creature companions. Not every wizard need be pictured with an owl, or every witch accompanied by ravens. But Anders missed his cats, whatever that said about him. He was sure they would have come to him, if they weren't deterred by the sewers. He didn't really want to think about what was keeping them away.  


“What are you doing?” Hawke had asked one day. She was always dropping by the clinic, more often lately. Checking on him, he knew, since she rarely came with injuries she couldn’t heal herself.  


“Putting out milk. I miss having a cat around. But I think the refugees have scared them all off. Or maybe eaten them.” He didn’t want to talk about that.  


Hawke was a dog person. Maybe not the slobbering mabari that graced her estate, but her personality fit a dog’s to a T. Friendly. Energetic. Open. Helpful. That she chose to cross paths with unlucky cats was, Anders thought, just an unfortunate example of that.  


Yet here she was, again. Didn’t she know better than to hang around him? When did befriending a shady apostate ever end well? Hadn’t she heard the stories? She had to know what happened around lone wizards, around mages who hid in dark corners and only sought the companionship of cats. There were no happy endings there. Those witches who lived alone in the forest baked children into pies, or cursed them into long, dreamless sleeping. They brought about nothing good; they were allied only to their freedom and their animals. He tried to tell her. But Hawke refused to listen.


End file.
